


former heroes who quit too late

by quidhitch



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/M, my children, this was really fun to write actually early makorra is so fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-03-03
Packaged: 2018-03-16 04:35:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3474608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quidhitch/pseuds/quidhitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>makorra works through their crap by beating stuff up and being heroes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	former heroes who quit too late

**Author's Note:**

> events take place across books 1, 2, and 3. written for the makorra gift exchange!

**1.**

“Stop looking at me like that,” Mako mutters, charging the words with as much hostility as humanely possible.

He should know after a month of hanging around this girl that he could be as venomous and cold as he wanted, that light in Korra’s eyes would stay stubbornly bright either way.

“Like what?” she asks cheerfully, continuing to stare at him with a blinding smile that seemed to illuminate the dark alleyway they were currently trudging down. He was walking her to the dock after practice, using some half put-together excuse about not wanting to be blamed by Tenzin if she got mugged or something.

(Really he just wants to talk to her. He doesn’t know why he can’t just say that, just tell her he wants to talk to her, but the words are stuck in his throat and there’s a knot at the bottom of his stomach and his palms are always sweaty now, always, and even looking at her feels like a superhuman effort.)

He lets her question hang in the air for a second, combing over his words, making sure they’re still just the right amount of impersonal, before responding, “Like I just saved a koala-kitten from a tree.”

She tips her head back and laughs, and oh, spirits, he’s either dying or going completely insane because he’s pretty sure his heart just stuttered, which was a dysfunction he thought was reserved specifically for his mouth. He wants to look over at her, wants to see her head tip back, the corners of her eyes crinkle, her arms fold over her stomach in careless happiness, but he doesn’t. He forces himself not to.

“You’re doing a nice thing for me tonight,” she says, adjusting the strap of the gym bag slung over her shoulder, “this is how you’re supposed to look at people who do nice things for you.”

But they both know that’s not true, they both know she’s looking at him like he’s some sort of altruistic, self-sacrificing-do-gooder, and he wants to scream. He wants to hold her face in his hands and tell her over and over and over to stop expecting things of him, to stop believing in him, to stop asking him to be a hero, because he worked long and hard to suppress any instinct that wasn’t protecting himself and Bolin, and she can’t just stroll into his life and tear that down one month.

“It’s not nice, it’s decent.” He keeps it short and clipped, not trusting himself with more words, words are too hard with her, they get tangled up in each other and lose meaning, and suddenly it seems like the only way she’ll understand what he’s trying to tell her is if he kisses her, and he just can’t let that happen. Again.

“Hey cool guy,” she says, swiveling on her heel to face him when they’re at the edge of the dock, “it’s nice. You’re nice.” She punches him in the arm, then, and he thinks about how pretty she is. “Deal with it.”

And with that she hops in the boat and splays her arms out behind her, easily gathering a current that propels towards Air Temple Island. He can only watch in dejected silence and pretend like won’t be over-analyzing her words for the rest of the night.

_It’s nice._

He’s not this guy, he can’t be this guy, not even for her.

_You’re nice._

She makes him want to be, though, with her big, blue eyes and her stupid dimples.

_Deal with it._

He’s so fucked. He’s so totally and utterly fucked.

**2.**

When they can’t decide what to order from Narook’s, when she’s trying to convince him to skip work that day, when they’re both on the precipice of saying something they don’t mean, she says “let’s fight” and he rolls his eyes like he’s above such brutish conflict resolution but he’s not. He loves it. He loves it just as much as she does and that’s why it works, that’s why  
twenty minutes later, when she’s got him pinned to ground, they’re both smiling and everything feels okay.

“I think that’s a new record, Officer,” she says, pressing his arms into the coarse fabric of his living room floor, eyes flashing, prior argument completely forgotten.

“I let you win,” he shoots back, feigning nonchalance, and they both grin because they know he’s a dirty liar. His arms burn where her palms hold him down and his breath comes out in short pants as she’s sitting right above his diaphragm, but he relishes in the discomfort. Maybe it’s fucked up, but he loves the part of her that can take him down and make him hurt and not even feel a little bit sorry.

Digging her knee into his ribs, she leans down close to his face, so close he can see the sweat beading at the top of her brow, so close he can count each one of her eyelashes, and suddenly it hits him. He can kiss her. He can kiss her whenever he wants, he’s allowed to do that now, so he does, he gets in close so she’s just as distracted as she is, knees her in the stomach, flips them over, and kisses her.

He can tell she’s a little grumpy that he’s on top because as she’s kissing him, she slides her hand down his back to pinch his ass, but he makes up for it, pressing his mouth against that spot behind her ear that makes her sigh.

“If we don’t place our order soon, Narook’s is gonna close,” she mutters, tangling her hands in his hair and linking one of her legs over his.

“Hmmph,” is all he offers in response, making a path down the column of her throat that makes her back arch just the slightest bit.

“Mako, what if I starve?” she whines, tugging at his hair. He bites her pulse point.

“Lin is gonna fire you if you let the Avatar starve,” the words come out in one breath, the last word muffled as he pushes his lips against hers once more. And he’s lost again, drifting, drifting, drifting in the circle of her arms, trying to convince himself that he won’t mess this up.

Apparently, she was just thinking about about how painful an elbow to the gut would be because next thing he knows, he’s on his back again, she’s looming over him, and he can feel a bruise starting to blossom on his stomach.

She leans down to whisper something to him, lips brushing against his ear, and Mako is suddenly very, very scared they’re about to wander into uncharted territory.

“Mako?” his name had never sounded like that, thick with wanting and bursting with sensuality.

“Yes?” is all he can rasp in reply. He’s pretty sure his entire body is blushing, his arms, his face, his chest - can the soles of your feet blush? Because his were.

“Do you think we should get the dumplings or the arctic hen?”

And suddenly the moment is broken, and he’s scrambling to push her off him, and she’s laughing so hard and so loud he’s afraid she’s going to wake up his brother in the next room.

“You suck,” he says, trying to pack the words with some conviction, but really he’s just smiling sheepishly, running a nervous hand through his sweaty hair as he sits up.

“Dumplings it is,” she winks, hopping to her feet and walking lazily over to the phone, and he can’t help but think this means she won. She always wins.

**3.**

She understands him best when he’s throwing a punch, fist curled, body tense, his mind already mapping out his next six moves. She can tell you why he chose to hit there, pull back then, favor his right to his left then switch back again.

She worries that he’s not telling her everything when they talk, that he’s pushing back words because he thinks she can’t handle them or they’ll scare her away, and that makes her mad. That makes her so, so, so mad.

But when he’s standing next to her, and they’re looking the apocalypse straight in the eye, she doesn’t have to worry about him holding back. He gives it everything he has and she gets to see him let go, lose himself in it, and it’s beautiful.

**4.**

“Don’t wear the blue tie.”

Her voice comes from somewhere behind him, and although he heard her coming down the hallway, the sound makes him want to shiver. Thankfully he’s able to suppress it.

“There’s a grass stain on the red one,” he mumbles, looking at her reflection in the mirror in front of him. He tries to smile but it probably comes out more like a grimace.

She shrugs, and he can’t believe this, how easy it is for her. Just being in the same room now puts this squeezing ache in his chest and no matter how many times he convinces himself that it’s better this way, that they’re better this way, everything feels wrong.

“It still looks better than the blue one,” she says, leaving the safety of the doorway and approaching him. He tries not to tense up and probably looks like he’s having a mild seizure.

“Besides,” she says, picking the red tie off the bed and holding it to his chest, “I’m wearing blue. And I don’t want to be matching, that’s so tacky.”

The smile comes a little easier now, and he nods and reaches to take the tie from her. Their fingers brush. He keeps his hand against hers for just a second too long like a lovesick moron.

She coughs awkwardly, and he turns away from her again, pulling his tie out from around his neck with more aggression than absolutely necessary, silently wishing she would leave so he could be alone with his humiliation.

No such luck. She sits down on the bed, pressing her palms into the covers and leaning forward slightly, “How do you feel about this whole award thing anyways? I never really got a chance to ask you.” The ‘because I was too busy avoiding you’ doesn’t need to be said, it already sits heavily in the air between them.

He shrugs, “Bolin wants to go, and I go where Bolin goes.”

“You don’t think you deserve it?”

“I didn’t do anything a hundred other people wouldn’t have.”

She snorts, and it feels like a punch to the gut, “Come on, Mako, you can’t seriously believe that.”

His eyes narrow and he turns to face her again, fumbling with his tie, posture stiffening, “I did my part to make sure the world wasn’t plunged into 10,000 years of darkness. Nobody wants that. Anyone could’ve helped.”

Her jaw locks for a second, and he knows he’s pissed her off, and he braces himself for another screaming match - good, good, they should scream at each other, they should learn how to hate each other - but it doesn’t come. She takes a breath, her eyes glassing over for a second, before getting up and walking over to him. It takes everything he has not to run in the opposite direction.

She takes his tie, pinching it between her fingers with one hand and adjusting his collar with the other, her fingers brushing up against the skin on his neck. He hopes he isn’t blushing, “Hey cool guy,” she says, and she’s close, too close, but he can’t push her away, this is the first time she’s touched him in days and he hadn’t realized until just then how much it’d been killing him, “It was nice. You’re nice. Deal with it."

A small, traitorous smile betrays him as he looks down at her, and after a second she looks up and smiles back. She stops straightening and admires her handiwork before placing her hands on his chest and smoothing the fabric down, “I wouldn’t want just anyone to help.”

He can’t help it, there’s love in her eyes and her hands are still on his chest and she still believes in him, even after everything he’s done, she still believes in him. He leans down to kiss her, one hand tangling in her hair, the other wrapping itself around her waist.

She’s still for a second too long and the embarrassment hits him strong, nearly knocking the air out of his chest, and he’s about to pull away and start spewing apologies when he feels her hands, the ones on his chest, slide up to his shoulders and curve around his neck.

“I love you,” he whispers when she pulls away, and she nods, a tear gathering in the corner of her eye as she leans down to tuck her head against his neck.

They stand there holding each other until it’s time to go.

Mako is getting an award for extraordinary valor in front of the whole city today, an award presented by the President, but the only thing he can think about, even when he’s up in front of all those people, is how good the Avatar is with her mouth.

**5.**

They run into a couple bandits on their way back from chasing a dead end about an air bender in the outer ring, and Korra almost sighs in relief.

It’s been weird between them since Harmonic Convergence, because in a way, everything is the same. He loves her. He’d die for her. He’d follow her to the ends of the earth without question.

But on the other hand everything is different because now they know what it’s like to hold each other, to carelessly hand out I love yous, to kiss each other when he gets home from work, to dance, pressed close together, off-tempo, his apartment bathed in romantic moonlight. And there’s no way to forget what that was like, no way to erase those memories, and every time she looks at him that’s what she sees.

They can’t get through one conversation without an awkward pause, a stutter, a forced smile, and she misses him so much she can’t breathe sometimes, misses his dorky jokes, misses his hugs, misses going to their favorite dumpling place, misses just talking to him. (She wishes he was better at that last one, now. The talking.)

But now when he looks at her, eyes smiling though his mouth lies in a grim line, and inclines his head just slightly to the right, he knows she understands perfectly.

She sends a plume of fire, huge and bright and red, enough to alert the others of their position, hurling towards their attackers, and Mako takes advantage of the momentary smoke and confusion to punch out two of them, before casting their limp bodies to the side and clashing fists with another bandit.

They work their way savagely through nearly half the troupe and maybe it’s a little carnal, and a little like something pre-patience-and-maturation Korra would do, but it’s good for them. It’s a way to talk about things that matter without actually having to say anything.

By the time Tenzin and the others finally show up, they’re nearly through, and the new additions even out the sides a little. The whole thing is over in under 10 minutes, but Korra’s still buzzing with adrenaline. She has to suppress the urge to start running and never stop, the earth shifting beneath her, bursts of air shooting from her heel each time it makes contact with the ground.

She looks over at Mako and she can tell he feels it too, the voices in their heads have stopped talking, it’s finally quiet, and everything feels right. They lock eyes and he smiles, a genuine, whole, fierce smile that’s gone as quickly as it came, but the effect lingers anyways and Korra’s heart stutters. They’re staring at each other. They’re making everyone else uncomfortable, like they’re intruding on some private moment, but for once, they don’t feel like they have to care.

**6.**

He’d go to his grave promising this wasn’t true, but when Mako was twelve and the nights were cold and their stomachs were empty, he built a world in his head where he could escape. A future, planned out in painstaking detail - his huge house, his well-paying job, his wife, who was beautiful and kind and soft. Mako would keep her safe. Mako wouldn’t let his kids be orphans.

Things started to get better for him and Bolin and he didn’t need the fantasy to get to sleep anymore, but every once in a while he’d revisit the idea just to make sure it was still what he wanted. For a while it was.

Then she came crashing into his life.

She was nothing like the soft, quiet, calm he’d dreamed of. She was loud and reckless and this terrifying hurricane of a person who fought her way into his heart, smirking at his walls before kicking them down without breaking a sweat, making herself so radiant he couldn’t possibly look away, giving him no other choice.

And the fantasies turned to ash in his mind, every detail falling flat in comparison to his new reality, to this girl, who changed lives and promised freedom and gave him something to believe in again and he thought, shit, they could have their white-picket fences if it meant he got to keep saving the world with her.


End file.
